Whether they’re watching the latest episode of a favorite sitcom or lounging during the holidays with big bowl football games, it’s safe to say people love their cable providers — as long as the picture is clear on their television sets and everything is in working order.

But you know there are a lot of areas where things can go off the rails for potential and existing customers, from better offers from competing cable providers to billing problems to an installation snafu or major technical issues after years of service.

There are so many touchpoints for your company and your customers, it could be difficult to get feedback on all of them during a short call or telephone survey. So why not customize your information gathering by using simple text message–based surveys for different points in the process: shopping around, installation, routine checkups and even major outages.

If a potential customer calls you to get information about service, send a survey after they’re done to find out how likely they are to go with your service versus a competitor’s. Find out what they have that you don’t, or something they don’t do that you do. If there’s a promotion a prospective customer especially likes, you’ll know to continue it. The best part about these surveys is the instant feedback they provide — even if you lose one household’s business, you have the opportunity to immediately correct or adjust for the next one based on the answers you receive.

If a customer calls your customer service hotline, you can set up a system that will automatically push a text survey to them after they complete the call. You can find out their hold time, how helpful the representative was, whether their issue was resolved and even what could be done better for next time.

Perhaps there’s even opportunity to take time during a service outage to get customers’ feedback: Do you have an outage screen that typically displays on screens by default? Consider including a survey short code on that screen to get instant feedback on how your customer service representatives and service technicians are responding to the issues.

Because of the immediacy of these results — and because customers are far more likely to use an SMS-based survey system over dialing into an 800-number and offering their input that way — this could be your opportunity to catch an unhappy customer before they take to Consumerist, Yelp or another online forum to share their experience with others.